Head of Engineering - Developer Experience & Platform (f/m/d)

Head of Engineering - Developer Experience & Platform

Awin is seeking an exceptional engineering leader to shape the future of how our engineers build, ship, and operate software at scale. As Head of Engineering – Developer Experience & Platform, you will own the end-to-end developer experience strategy, drive the adoption of AI-native engineering practices, modernise our cloud platform, and lead the teams and tooling that enable Awin's engineering organisation to work at its best.

This is a high-impact leadership role at the intersection of engineering excellence, platform strategy, and AI innovation. You will define and deliver the developer experience (DevEx) vision for Awin, ensuring our engineers have the tools, environments, processes, and culture to be highly productive and deeply satisfied in their work. You will own our platform strategy on AWS, lead FinOps practices, and spearhead the organisation-wide rollout of AI-augmented and agentic development workflows.

You will act as a trusted internal champion for engineers – gathering data-driven insight, translating it into organisation-wide improvements, and working hand-in-hand with engineering leadership, product, and stakeholders to make change happen and allow our Product teams to deliver value to our customers at scale.

The right candidate has strong hands-on experience with modern AI-driven software development and building developer-centric cloud platforms at scale. This is a senior but hands-on role within the Engineering organisation, reporting to the Director of Engineering.

Key Tasks & Responsibilities

Developer Experience Strategy & Tooling

• Own and evolve Awin's Developer Experience programme – defining the vision, strategy, and roadmap for DevEx improvement across the engineering organisation
• Identify friction points, productivity blockers, and systemic inefficiencies through data, qualitative research, and direct engagement with engineering teams, other Heads of Engineering or Engineering Managers
• Drive organisation-wide improvements to technology, tooling, and engineering processes, building consensus and alignment with key stakeholders across product, engineering, security, and operations.
• Establish and track DevEx metrics and KPIs (e.g. DORA metrics, developer satisfaction scores), using them to demonstrate impact and guide investment decisions.
• Own the developer tools portfolio and associated budgets – evaluating, procuring, and retiring tools to ensure engineers have best-in-class tooling without unnecessary cost or complexity.
• Lead strategic assessment and rollout of new developer tooling, including CI/CD platforms, IDE capabilities, code quality and security tools.

AI-Native Development & Agentic Workflows

• Lead Awin's AI engineering rollout – defining the strategy for AI-native software development, establishing standards, and scaling adoption across the engineering organisation.
• Evaluate and implement AI-augmented development tools including AI coding assistants, agentic development environments, automated code review, test generation, and intelligent CI/CD pipelines.
• Champion modern AI-native software development best practices and drive continuous evaluation of the rapidly evolving AI tooling landscape.
• Design and deliver enablement programmes – training, communities of practice, documentation, and hands-on workshops – to accelerate AI fluency and confidence across engineering teams.
• Measure and report on the impact of AI adoption on developer productivity, code quality, and time-to-market.

Cloud Platform Optimisation

• Lead the strategy and execution of cloud platform standardisation across Awin's AWS estate, establishing golden paths, reference architectures, and platform abstractions that improve developer experience and reduce cognitive load.
• Drive cloud migration efforts, infrastructure modernisation initiatives, partnering with Product teams to improve reliability, scalability, observability, and security posture (including platform-wide Incident Management, SRE
• Own AWS cost management and FinOps practices – establishing budgeting frameworks, implementing cost allocation and tagging strategies, identifying and acting on optimisation opportunities, and providing transparent reporting to leadership.
• Build out internal developer platform capabilities to abstract cloud complexity and accelerate developer self-service.
• Ensure cloud platform decisions are made with developer experience as a primary consideration alongside cost efficiency, security, and scalability.

Leadership & Organisational Impact

• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing team spanning developer experience, platform engineering, and tooling functions.
• Act as a collaborative, influential engineering leader, shaping Awin's technical culture, engineering standards, and ways of working.
• Contribute to the engineering leadership team, participating in strategic planning, headcount discussions, and broader organisational design.

Skills & Experience

• Significant experience in and passion for software engineering, with hands-on coding background in one or more major languages (e.g. Java, TypeScript).
• Strong understanding of AI-native software development – including AI coding assistants (e.g. Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot), agentic development workflows, and LLM-integrated toolchains.
• Proven leadership experience in developer experience, platform engineering, developer productivity, or a related engineering leadership role within a mid-to-large scale technology organisation.
• Deep understanding of the software development lifecycle, engineering best practices, and what makes engineering teams highly productive.
• Demonstrable experience leading and improving CI/CD practices, deployment pipelines, and developer tooling ecosystems.
• Strong background in AWS – comfortable with infrastructure-as-code (e.g. Terraform), container platforms, serverless patterns, and cloud-native architectures.
• Experience with FinOps or cloud cost management, including budgeting, tagging strategies, and cost optimisation at scale.
• Track record of successfully delivering organisation-wide change programmes in collaboration with cross-functional stakeholders.
• Experience designing and using developer experience metrics frameworks (e.g. DORA, SPACE, DX Core 4) to measure and improve developer productivity.
• Demonstrated ability to lead, inspire, and grow engineering teams in a fast-paced, distributed environment.
• Strong commercial awareness – experience managing budgets, building business cases, and making tool and investment decisions with clear ROI thinking.
• Ability to balance strategic thinking with hands-on delivery; comfortable operating from vision through to execution.
• Experience working in global, distributed engineering organisations across multiple time zones and cultures.

Our Offer

• Flexi-Week : We prioritise your mental health and wellbeing by offering you a four-day Flexi-Week (with one lighter or completely disconnected day per week) at full pay, with no reduction to your annual holiday allowance.
• Flexi-office : We offer an international culture and flexibility through our hybrid/remote working scheme which is designed to foster a culture of mutual trust and working flexibility.
• Work Expense Contribution & Remote Working Furniture : You will receive a monthly allowance to cover part of your running costs, as well as a furniture package to support you in setting up a comfortable workspace when working from home.
• Health and Wellbeing : With our support and access to various initiatives and sports offers, you can focus on your mental and physical wellbeing.
• Development : We’ve built our extensive training suite, Awin Academy, to cover a wide range of skills that support your professional and personal growth, with trainings conveniently packaged to help your overall development.
• Appreciation : Thank and reward colleagues by sending them a voucher through our peer-to-peer recognition programme.

We are hiring in multiple countries for this role. Additional benefits, including health and wellbeing offerings, will be discussed during the initial interview.

Established in 2000, Awin is proud of our dynamic, social and inclusive culture.

Like all businesses, we’ve had to adapt and nurture our culture in a virtual environment. Our virtual ‘Life @ Awin’ hub brings our colleagues from across the globe together for various social activities.

Diversity & Inclusion are paramount to us, and we proudly pursue and hire diverse team members. We champion uniqueness and authenticity; this is who we are at our core. Our network of affiliate partnerships are diverse and transparent, as are the employees powering our vision to build the world’s leading open partner ecosystem. We welcome all backgrounds, identities, and experiences. If you need support at any point in the application or interview process, please let us know.

Awin is part of the Axel Springer group. Learn more at axelspringer.com/ en / , and explore the Axel Springer Essentials here: axelspringer.com/en/inside/the-essentials-what-we-have-adapted-and-why

Apply now to begin the next stage of your career at a progressive company that supports both your professional and personal development.

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